Simple Twist Of Fate
by red-starshine
Summary: Chas Chandler dies in a bar fire, but John Constantine, the psychopomp who's supposed to guide Chas to the afterlife, decides that Chas deserves another shot at life instead. (Reaper!John AU - John/Chas)
1. one: ghost town

**simple twist of fate**

by red-starshine

 **part one: ghost town**

* * *

There was darkness. Nothing but darkness.

Chas groaned, his head pounding. He sat up unsteadily, breaking off into a coughing fit. It took him a moment to realize he didn't need to cough; the smoke was gone, and he wasn't gasping for air. His throat and his chest felt fine. Chas took a deep, steadying breath, closing his eyes for a moment before opening them again.

No. Still dark. His stomach clenched as a thought occurred to him - had he lost his sight in the bar fire?

"Hello?" he called, his voice wavering slightly. "Is anyone there? I can't see anything."

"There's nothing wrong with your eyes, Chas. That's normal," came a voice with a thick working-class British accent behind him. "Sometimes just takes a tic to center yourself again. Should pass."

Chas looked over his shoulder. The blond man he'd seen at the bar before the fire had started was there, standing with his hands in the pockets of his rumpled trenchcoat.

Right. He'd said his name was John and Chas had bought him a beer at the bar. They'd chatted a little before the band got onstage. John was from England, and was in the US on business, although he'd been tight-lipped about exactly what business he was in, and why that business had lead him to a crappy dive bar in Brooklyn that'd stubbornly resisted gentrification. After the band's pyrotechnics had ignited the stage, things got hazy. Chas put a hand to his head and winced.

Behind John stood a tall skeletal tree, its knobby branches bare. The rest of his surroundings slowly faded into view; the brittle brown grass underneath his feet, a stormy grey sky, smoky black streaks racing across the clouds.

Chas stared up at the sky, his mouth open. "What the hell?"

John grinned. "See, there you go."

Chas looked around, his mouth open. "Where are we?"

"The Crossroads," said John. "Not much to look at, I grant you. Think of it as a way station between life and the afterlife."

Chas stared at him for a moment. "I'm dead?" he said flatly. Part of him wouldn't be surprised if he was, not after he'd lost consciousness in the middle of a burning building in Brooklyn. But he didn't feel dead - as far as he could tell he looked the same as when he'd woken up that morning, he was wearing the clothes he'd worn to the bar and he still had a pounding headache right above his eyes. Did dead people get headaches?

John shifted uncomfortably on his feet for a moment, but then looked at him, met his eyes. There wasn't a hint of deception there. "Yeah. Sorry, mate, but you're done."

"Oh." His first thoughts were of his daughter, who'd grow up without him in her life. He'd known what it was like to lose your father at such a young age, and the thought of Geraldine having to suffer through that as well broke his heart. "Shit. Geraldine..."

Chas hasn't cried in front of someone in decades, not since his own father'd died when he'd been younger than his daughter was now, but he felt warm tears come to his eyes. He looked down at the dirt road and surreptitiously tried to wipe them from his eyes.

John glanced at him, an unreadable expression on his face. He pulled out a half-crumpled carton of cigarettes and a gold lighter from his pockets, shaking out one cigarette and placing it between his lips. "She your kid?" he said mildly.

Chas nodded. "Love her more than anything," he mumbled thickly.

John flicked the lighter, the small flame illuminating his face as he cupped his hands to light the cigarette. He took a puff, a trail of smoke wafting out of his mouth. "I dunno if it'll make you feel any better about snuffin' it," said John, holding the cigarette between two fingers, staring down at the lit end, "But that woman you helped through the window when the fire started? She was supposed to die too. She's only alive right now 'cause of what you did."

Chas was quiet for a moment, letting John's words roll around in his mind before allowing them to sink in. He'd saved at least one person from that fire. It did make him feel slightly better, surprisingly. Not entirely, but at least he hadn't died for nothing.

"Thanks," murmured Chas quietly.

"Don't mention it, mate." John blew out another stream of cigarette smoke, glancing up at the swirling sky.

"You're not some kind of angel, I'm guessing," said Chas after a moment, eying the cigarette.

John snorted, the corners of his mouth quirking up briefly. "Not hardly. 'Bout as divine as a porny Tijuana bible." He paused to take a drag from his cigarette, looking up at Chas with an almost pained smile. "Consider me your tour guide through the Crossroads."

"So this is like Limbo," said Chas.

John shrugged. "Different words, means the same bloody thing."

"Why am I here?"

"Because you died under traumatic circumstances, would be my bet," said John. "See, most people move on to the afterlife without any help when they die, but some people need a little extra push to get there." John gave a toothy grin. "I give the reluctant ones a slight kick in the arse to get them where they're supposed to go, when it's their time to check out." John looked around at his surroundings. "But some people are just stubborn, apparently. You're not supposed to be here."

"All right, so where am I supposed to be?" said Chas, utterly lost. He hadn't intended to end up at the Crossroads. It looked like the set of a low-budget horror movie, but it still gave him the creeps.

"Happily crossed over into the afterlife and, I don't know, bobbing around being one with the universe or some other new-age shite like that."

Chas stared at him for a moment. "You mean you don't know what the afterlife's like?"

John gave him a look. "I'm still alive, squire. Never been, myself," he said with a shrug. "I know enough magic tricks to point people in the right direction, is all."

Chas glanced around at the old tree and blackened sky. "Then what am I doing here?"

"No bloody idea," said John cheerfully. "I mean, I punted you towards the afterlife and you apparently slammed down on the brakes hard enough to land here. Which is damn impressive." John sat down underneath the branches of the tree and gave a light chuckle. "I mean it. You're really something else, mate. I've been doing this for over fifteen years and you're the very first one out of thousands of souls to wind up at the Crossroads instead."

"So what happens now?" said Chas, awkwardly rubbing one arm. Deep down, he already knew the answer: if this was a halfway point between life and the afterlife, he'd be sent back on his way to whatever came next.

But he really had no interest in heading for the afterlife, or becoming one with the universe, or whatever it was that waited for him there. John made it sound like most people who died found their way to the afterlife without any help, but he didn't feel any compulsion or pull guiding him there. Mostly he just felt cold and tired and homesick, and his headache had only gotten worse.

"Now?" repeated John, briefly appearing conflicted. His mouth opened again for a moment, but he didn't say anything. John looked hesitant to say anything else. He glanced around at the tree and brittle grass, anywhere but at Chas. Flicking his half-smoked cigarette into the dirt, he ground it with the heel of his shoe before closing the distance between them.

Chas had to look down to meet John's eyes. There was pain there, sharp misery and empathy and something else he couldn't quite identify. Whatever it was, it made him vaguely uneasy.

"Fuck it." John let out a breath that smelled of tobacco and then lightly thumped his fingers against Chas's chest. "What happens now," he said to Chas finally, "is that you wake up."

A spike of pain drove itself into Chas's chest and jolted through every nerve in his body, his muscles locking up until it had passed. He shuddered, stumbling forward slightly. "What did you do?" he ground out through gritted teeth.

A slow, pleased smile that made Chas shudder again spread across John's face as he grabbed one of Chas's hands and pressed two fingers against the inside of Chas's wrist. After a few moments, he let Chas's arm go. "Feel that, mate? It's your heart starting to beat again."

Chas weakly pressed his hand against his chest. Underneath his fingertips, there was a weak, quivering heartbeat he could barely feel but was undeniably there. Jerking his hand away, Chas stared at John in disbelief. "But you just told me I'm dead. How's that possible?" he said before another wave of excruciating pain struck him.

"I'm making an exception for you," said John with an unearthly gleam in his eyes. "Consider it one hell of a favor, yeah? Not every day I send someone back after they die."

Chas barely had the time to realize what John had said before John pressed his hands against both sides of his face. Closing his eyes, John roughly crushed his lips against Chas's.

It wasn't a tender, gentle kiss, like the ones he'd given Renee when he'd left for work each morning before their marriage had crashed and burned. This was full of want and need and unrestrained desire, a raw, hungry passion impossible to withstand. Chas couldn't help but melt against it, his own fingers finding their way through John's blond hair. His nerves burned and tingled where John's fingers brushed against his bare skin, as if John was bringing him back to life one touch at a time.

His head still buzzing, Chas barely heard the darkly amused chuckle from John as he hesitantly pulled away from Chas.

"Ta, mate," said John, with that smug grin again. "See you on the other side."

And then Chas woke up sealed inside a body bag in the Brooklyn Hospital's morgue.


	2. two: one of the millions

**simple twist of fate**

by red-starshine

 **part two: one of the millions**

* * *

Chas flailed inside the plastic bag for a second, not realizing where he was. He banged his elbow against the metal wall of the morgue's refrigerator, and he swore loudly. The jangling pain radiating from his elbow made him stop to figure out where he was while trying to clamp down on the panic that was steadily building. Chas felt the thick but flexible plastic material encasing him between his fingers, and quickly realized what it was - a plastic body bag.

He'd been dead. Now he wasn't. John had brought him back to life, given him a second chance.

Unfortunately, John hadn't sent him back fast enough to keep his dead body from being recovered from the remains of the bar and taken to the morgue.

Chas sighed. It was a minor inconvenience considering he'd been a cold corpse only a few short minutes ago, but he wished John'd revived him before he'd been put into the morgue's refrigerator.

He felt for the body bag's zipper, and found the harder plastic teeth of the zipper running down the center of the bag. Chas picked at the zipper, quickly creating a gap large enough to snake his hand out of and yank the zipper pull down to his abdomen.

There wasn't much room to maneuver around in to free himself from the bag. The refrigerator was about as spacious as a casket, and the thought of waking up not inside a morgue cooler but in a coffin already buried underground was terrifying. The chill of the refrigerated air worked its way into his body as he pulled his feet out of the body bag. As far as he could tell in the darkened refrigerator, he still had his clothes on, although they stank of smoke and plaster.

With his feet free, Chas carefully pushed himself down the metal slab he was lying on until his shoes hit the metal door. The nerves in Chas's hands were screaming from the cold bite of the metal wall against his bare skin, but Chas ground his teeth and braced himself against the metal chamber. He kicked down as hard as he could, and the door to the refrigerator flew open, banging loudly against the next row of refrigerators.

Chas froze. When no one started screaming at one of the corpses in the morgue refrigerators freeing itself, he let out a sigh of relief and began to slowly slide himself down the slab until his feet finally touched the floor. He dropped out of the open door, landing in an ungainly sprawl on the tile, shivering and disoriented

"God, being dead sucks," Chas muttered to himself.

The morgue was deserted, the light from a hallway outside just enough for Chas to see by. Besides the bank of refrigerators behind him, there was only a rolling metal stretcher, a large plastic bin, a sink, and a small metal desk with a laptop buried underneath a stack of manilla folders.

Chas slowly stood up, the joints of his knees rigid and popping. He felt stiff all over, and spent a minute just stretching out his arms and legs. He wouldn't get very far if his legs gave out on him when he was trying to sneak out of the hospital.

The door creaked open, a sound that made Chas's heart plunge down.

"Oh, bollocks," swore John behind him.

Chas snorted and turned around. John was standing next to the desk, looking at something in one of the folders.

"Nice of you to show up," said Chas, reaching into the refrigerator and pulling out his body bag. He wadded it up and dropping it into a large bin. "What're you looking at?"

"The x-rays of your body," said John. "Apparently you were next in line for an autopsy when the medical examiner called it quits for the day." John made a face. "Glad I got to you before she did; wouldn't fancy having to stuff your organs back in. I'd probably put your pancreas in the wrong way."

Chas reached over and pulled the x-ray from John's hands easily. Noticing a lightbox on the wall, he flipped it on and held the x-ray in front of it.

There was a vague outline of skin in the general shape of a body, but the mangled remains of his crushed skeleton was the most noticeable. His arms and legs were broken and pointed in ways that made his stomach drop at the sheer wrongness of it. It didn't look like a human body, more like a sack of skin that someone had filled with cement and bits of a human skeleton.

"I'm not sure what the autopsy would've been like, but that still looks pretty bad," said Chas, feeling slightly sick. How had John brought him back from that?

"Most people die in fires from inhaling the smoke," said John, hovering near Chas's arm. He pointed at the throat in the x-ray. "You were breathing carbon monoxide and cyanide instead of oxygen, and smoke that hot burns you from the inside out." He grimaced slightly. "Nasty way to go, although having a roof fall on your head isn't much better."

Chas's throat went dry. "The roof collapsed?" It would explain why his corpse looked like a squashed insect in the x-rays, but there'd been so many people still stuck inside the bar when he'd lost consciousness. Had any of them gotten out before the building caved in?

John was quiet for a long moment. "It came down just after you died."

There were still too many people trapped in the bar when he'd passed out. Chas took a deep breath and asked the question he didn't want to ask: "How many others died?"

John sighed and shook his head slightly. "Not counting you, forty-four already dead. Three more've been hanging on but won't make it through the night. Forty-seven all together."

Forty-seven people dead. Chas felt something drop in his chest. It still seemed like a bad dream, unreal.

"It would've been worse without you, Chas," said John.

It didn't make any sense. Why had he been granted a reprieve from death, but not any of the other casualties? "If you're bringing people back from the dead, why not resurrect all of them?" said Chas sharply, gesturing towards the bank of morgue refrigerators behind him. Each one held someone who was just as deserving of a second chance at life at he was. It wasn't fair that he was the only one brought back from the fire.

John stood in front of him, his face unnervingly blank for a moment. He took a step towards Chas, his face cold but barely-contained fury boiling just underneath. In spite of the other man's smaller size, Chas had to stop himself from taking a step back. "You think I can just snap me fingers and poof, everyone's alive again? That's not how this works," hissed John. "And even if I could bring everyone back, you don't think someone would notice if forty-seven extremely dead people just got up and buggered off? Fuck me, it's going to be hard enough trying to figure out a way to explain you."

Chas's stomach dropped. "Explain me?"

John gave him an almost pitying look. "You died, mate. I wasn't able to get your body healed fast enough to keep them from starting the process of declaring you legally dead." John pulled out a piece of paper from the folder and held it in front of Chas's face. "Look, here's your death certificate."

His face paling, Chas snatched the paper from John. His full name was at the top, and next to that was the date of he'd died. Some parts of the certificate weren't filled in yet, and his cause of death near the bottom wasn't named, only that it was pending investigation.

John tapped the certificate somewhere in the middle. "This part here's the kicker."

Chas quickly glanced to where John was pointing to. His brows furrowed in confusion. "What funeral home my body'd be going to? Why would that matter?"

"Because it means your family's already been told you were dead. See, they've made arraignments for your burial once the ME's done with you," said John. "It's a little late to go 'oops, clerical error, I'm really alive' when you're already on ice and your family's put the downpayment on your bloody casket."

"Oh." That would be a problem. "How long was I dead?"

John gave a strained smile. "Five days."


	3. three: hand in hand

**simple twist of fate**

by red-starshine

 **part three: hand in hand**

* * *

Chas's jaw dropped. "Are you serious? I was at the Crossroads for about five minutes! How has it been five days?"

"Yes, well, time's funny at the Crossroads," said John with a tight shrug. "It doesn't move in sync with here." He paused for a moment before looking pointedly at Chas. "And, again, making preparations to bring one burned and flattened corpse back to life isn't exactly the quickest thing in the world to accomplish."

Chas felt his headache return as he tore up the death certificate and x-ray and shoved them down into the bin of used body bags. "So everything's all fucked up now? Great."

"It's not irreparably fucked up," protested John. "It just...complicates matters slightly."

"Everybody thinks I'm dead," said Chas flatly.

"Yeah, well, the state of your body and your total lack of heartbeat over the past five days tends to give that impression," John pointed out. He grasped the handle to the morgue's door and yanked it open, slipping into the hall and out of the morgue.

"Hang on." John abruptly stopped in the hallway, and then turned towards a door leading to the stairwell. Chas followed closely behind him. John went up one flight of stairs, emerging in front of the doors leading to the ICU. John took Chas's arm before pressing the switch to open the doors. There were only two nurses at the station near the doors, and neither of them looked up as John and Chas walked past them.

"John?" Chas said. "What's going on?"

John stopped in front of a woman sitting next to a closed hospital room door, her curly dark red hair hanging in front of her face, and her arms crossed across a tight black tank. She looked like she was sleeping.

"John?" Chas repeated, not wanting to wake her.

The woman's head jerked up, her eyes wide, and Chas realized he knew her. She was Tess, the woman who'd been tending bar the night of the fire. He'd only met her a handful of times during her shifts, but she'd seemed nice.

"You...I know you," Tess said in confusion, standing up. "Chas, is that you?"

"Hey Tess," he said. "What're you doing here?"

"Oh my God, it's so good to see you," she said, placing her hands on Chas's arm. Her skin felt clammy and cold, and Chas had to suppress a shiver. "I just got here. Nobody'll tell me anything."

"Tess, was it?" said John, and Tess's head swiveled towards him, her eyes wide. "Tell me Tess, who's in there?" John jerked his head towards the closed door.

Tess placed a hand to her forehead and gave John an apologetic smile. "I'm sorry. I just got here. Nobody'll tell me anything."

Chas felt something sink in his stomach. "Are you feeling okay, Tess?"

She looked at him, perplexed. "Fine."

"Tess, luv, do you know why anyone won't talk to you?" asked John.

Tess shrugged. "I just got here."

"Tess, you already said that," said Chas, his confusion growing. He turned to John, who looked back at him grimly. "You know something. What's wrong with her?"

John shook his head slightly, his eyes downcast. "Look inside the room and this'll make a lot more sense, mate."

Chas glanced at the placard on the closed door, but it only said 'HOPKINS'. His hands sweaty, he slowly opened the door to the hospital room. His heart sank as he saw the occupant of the hospital bed, confirming his fears.

Tess's body was lying on the bed covered in bandages, her hair gone and angry red burns covering her exposed skin. A ventilation tube was taped over her mouth, and the ventilator nosily rumbled next to her bed in a pale imitation of breathing, a heart monitor beeping sporadically next to it. An IV drip was on the other side of her bed.

"John," called Chas warily, keeping his eyes on Tess's body.

John sighed. "Come with me, Tess." Taking her arm, he led Tess into the room, standing her in front of the bed. "Do you know who that is?" he asked her.

Tess looked at her withered body in the hospital bed for a moment and then stared at John. "I just got here. Nobody'll tell me anything," she repeated slowly, her eyes wide. This time it sounded almost pleading.

"Tess. That's you on the bed," said John. "Your body."

"There was a fire five days ago at the bar," said Chas as kindly he could, standing on her other side. He placed a hand on her shoulder and squeezed gently. "It killed a lot of people."

Tess shook her head vehemently and wrenched herself away from John and Chas, backing away from the bed. "No. No. Nobody'll tell me anything."

"Listen to me, luv. You're dying," John said firmly. "You've managed to hold on for a few more days than most, but you're still dying."

Tess started to cry, tears rolling down her cheeks. "Nobody'll tell me anything," she protested through the sobs, her shoulders hitching up and down.

John pointed back towards the withered figure in the bed. "Because that ventilator's the only thing keeping your body alive, and not for very much longer," he said. "I'm sorry, Tess."

She turned away from John, burying her face against Chas's sweater as her breath hitched.

"Nobody'll tell me anything," she sobbed. Chas wrapped his arms around her in a hug, rubbing her back, and she cried harder, trembling in his arms.

John sighed and made his way to the side of Tess's hospital bed.

The sporadic beeps from the heart monitor turned into a shrill high-pitched flatline as her body's heart stopped, and Tess's spirit let out a blood-curdling screech of pain, her legs giving out from under her. Chas caught her before she could fall to the floor. Her head rolled back and she screamed again.

"John?" he called worriedly over her moans. "What's wrong with her?"

"She's dying, mate," said John.

The blistering red burns from her body appeared across Tess's face and then smoothed over again to unblemished skin as she scrunched her eyes closed. "Hurts," she said tightly.

"It's time," said John dejectedly. "Say good-bye, Tess." He leaned over the bed and lightly pressed his hand against her body's burned forehead.

Tess vanished from Chas's arms with a sigh, dissipating like smoke.

John stood up from Tess's bed and grasped Chas's arm, yanking him into a darkened corner of the room just as two doctors rushed into Tess's room followed by a nurse rolling a crash cart. They didn't pay any attention to the two men standing behind them silently watching them try to force life back into Tess's corpse.

John sighed and pulled Chas out of the room when the younger doctor started chest compressions on Tess's body while the other prepared a syringe of clear liquid.

"She's gone," said John once they were out in the hall. "Poor bird. Lingering deaths are always rough."

"What was that, her ghost?"

John leaned against the wall and let out a long breath, reaching into his pocket to pull out his lighter, flicking the top open and shut. "Yeah, kind of. That was part of what made her Tess, her soul." He looked back towards the room as another nurse sprinted down the hall and into Tess's room. "When the body's dying like that, it's not unusual for the soul to, ah, detatch from it before it actaully dies."

"Why did she keep saying the same thing over and over like that?"

John motioned him down the hall, heading past the empty nurse's station and towards the doors leading out of the ICU and into the deserted hallway near a bank of elevators. "Ghosts have a nasty habit of getting fixated on one thing or another." He flicked his lighter open and shut again. "Think of them like a vinyl record with a scratch across the grooves. It'll play fine for the most part but once the needle hits that scratch, it'll just keep repeating the same thing over and over."

"I was't like that," said Chas.

"No, you weren't," said John. "Interesting, innit?"

Chas followed him, blinking his eyes against the bright glare of lights in the empty hallway. "And what was that about back at the Crossroads?"

"What was what?" said John innocently, a grin on his face.

"You know what. That kiss," said Chas. He nervously brushed his hair back from his face. Just thinking about it made him blush like a teenager.

"Oh, that," said John offhandedly, stopping in front of the door to the stairwell next to the row of elevators. "You've never heard of the kiss of death?" He reached into the pocket of his trenchcoat and pulled out a large ring of antique keys.

"Do you kiss everybody like that when you're on the clock?" said Chas.

John smirked, glancing at him. "Nah, just the ones I really like." Selecting a key, he stuck it into the door's lock and twisted.

Chas blinked. "What?"

John slipped through the door with an amused laugh.

Chas threw the door open. "Seriously, you don't say that and just walk awa-"

He stopped. Instead of the stairwell, the door lead to a large dimly-lit room, covered in cobwebs. Chas could see a dusty Persian rug on the floor and shelves of old books. John pulled off his trenchcoat and threw it over a chair.

Chas stared around the room, his mouth hanging open.

John turned around. "You comin' or not?"

Chas stepped into the room and let the door close behind him.


	4. four: friction

**simple twist of fate**

by red-starshine

 **part four: friction**

* * *

John lazily took a drag of his cigarette, saying nothing. He let out a stream of curling grey smoke into the room.

Chas looked around the large room, taking in the ancient books, the long strings of cobwebs, the fireplace. "What the hell? Where'd this place come from?"

John grinned. "It's the House of Mystery, mate. Bit hard to explain."

Chas stared at John, still standing with his hand on the doorknob. "Try."

John rolled his eyes. "All right. Open the door again."

Chas did so, expecting to see the hospital corridor. Instead he saw a outdoor clearing surrounded by trees, a rusting pickup truck sitting nearby. Overhead was a purple sky, the sun just starting to rise above the horizon. He could hear birds brightly chirping in the distance.

"Welcome to beautiful Atlanta, Georgia. Near as I can tell, this is where the House is actually situated," said John. He pulled out the key ring again. "These just let me turn any doorway with a lock into a way back to the House, no matter where I am. Good when you need to scurry in a hurry."

Chas shut the door again. "This is insane."

"Nah, it's just magic. Once you get the hang of it, it's not so bad," said John, disappearing into a side room. He returned a moment later with two glass bottles of beer. He tossed one to Chas. "Catch."

Chas fumbled the bottle but managed not to drop it on the floor. When he twisted off the metal cap and took a swig, he caught John giving him a look he couldn't quite understand.

"What?" said Chas curiously.

"Nothing. You're taking this whole thing much better than I thought you might," said John. "Dying and coming back from the dead and all."

"Sorry to disappoint you."

John burst out laughing. "Wasn't complaining at all," he said, as if it was obvious. He patted Chas's arm reassuringly. "I like the unexpected. Keeps things interesting, y'know?"

"Honestly, I'm starting to miss the expected," said Chas.

"Well mate, if you're not confused, you're not paying attention." John stood up. "Y'know, I'm surprised you could see Tess's soul like that. Touched her, too. Most people can't." He placed his own bottle down on the table, unopened. He took a drag from his cigarette. "I'd think it was a side effect of your brush with death, but you saw me at the bar too. Before the fire started."

Chas tried to think back to before the fire. John had been near the bar, looking glum. Chas had gotten him a drink, which seemed to have cheered him up slightly, although Tess had looked at him a little funny when he'd ordered two drinks. The staff at the hospital hadn't seemed to notice him either. "What, people can't see you?"

"Not when I don't want to be seen," said John, breathing out smoke. "Don't want someone always spottin' me near people who die under horrible circumstances and start gettin' the wrong idea, now."

"How long've you been doing this?"

"Since I was seventeen." John stubbed out the cigarette and twisted open his bottle. He took a long drink from it. "I was a stupid little punk who found himself in a lot of trouble."

"What, you got caught throwing rocks at somebody's house or something?"

"Heh. No, something much worse than that, " John snorted, but his face went oddly blank. "I tried to do a favor for a friend, and it went all wrong. And in that particular situation, when something goes tits up, people die."

Chas didn't say anything.

John took another long sip from his bottle of beer. "See, at the time, I fancied myself a master occultist. I'd read all the books on magic I could find, so I knew there were beings older than humanity and how to call on them. So I broke out the chalk and candles and summoned myself one of those beings out of sheer desperation. Cut a deal to try and patch things up as best I could. This was the price they named."

"Having to steer the dead towards the afterlife?"

"Essentially doing his grunt work for 'im, yeah. Lazy sod," John muttered.

"Now, John," came a voice from the other side of the table. "That isn't a very nice way to talk about your benefactor."

Startled, Chas's head swiveled towards the unknown speaker.

Standing across from them was what Chas could only call an angel. He was tall, dressed in a grey coat, with eyes of molten gold. His two wings were large, with white and grey feathers. When the angel noticed Chas staring at him, he gave him a grin full of perfect white teeth.

John gave a nonchalant shrug, unperturbed by the angel's sudden appearance. "I just tell it as I see it, squire."

"Well, I've never know you to hold your tongue," said the angel, lowering his wings. He tilted his head slightly at Chas, staring at him without blinking. "Aren't you going to introduce me to your quiet friend, John?"

John glared at the angel for a moment. "Chas, this is Manny," he said shortly. "Manny, Chas."

"Hi," said Chas, setting down his beer bottle.

"Chas, hm?" said Manny, eyeing Chas in a way that made his blood run cold, like he could see through the layers of skin and muscle directly to Chas's soul. "Now that's interesting. He's got the stink of death and decay around him, but he's still alive."

"Yeah, it's amazing what modern medicine can do those days, innit?" said John.

"John, I don't suppose you would care to explain why this dead man isn't dead?" Manny continued mildly. Only his nails digging into the wood of the table showed the cracks in his cool demeanor.

"Not particularly, no," said John, raising the bottle to his lips. "So how 'bout you do us all a favor and piss off?"

The angel was silent for a moment. "You are tremendously arrogant, John," said Manny, leaning over the table, golden eyes boring into John's. With a small gesture of his hand, he swept Chas away from the table and sent him tumbling head-over-heels towards one of the bookcases. The back of his skull cracked against the wood, and pain shot through his head.

John stood up from his chair, fists clenched. "Bastard! Leave him out of this."

Chas groaned from the floor, the room still spinning. It seemed better to just stay down for the moment - at least until he was sure that getting up wouldn't make him so dizzy that he fell back down again.

"And that's what got you into this mess way back when, right?" Manny said to John like nothing had happened. "Because you thought reading a few grimores and casting a handful of spells made you a master of magic who could go toe-to-toe with a demon and win."

John held Manny's gaze without flinching or looking away. "I remember fine, mate. And I'd tell you the same even if you had my still-beating heart in your angelic hands," he growled. "Fuck off."

Manny smiled again, and it was the most frightening thing Chas had ever seen. "We both know that's not true. You begged me to save that little girl back then, when you first called for me. Don't tell me you've forgotten that, John? Or that she's only alive today because of the agreement we made. You do what I tell you to, or her soul's going on a one-way trip back down to Hell."

"You'd give an innocent girl's soul to the First and his mates just to spite me?" said John. "Pull the other one. Aren't you angels supposed to be savin' people's souls from damnation, not handin' them over to the First of the bloody Fallen gift-wrapped?"

"I'm not giving up on anything," said Manny. "That girl's soul is claimed for Hell, and there's nothing I can do to change that. No matter what she does or when she dies, today, tomorrow, or sixty years from now - she's still going straight to Hell. And it's all because of you, John." He disappeared as quickly as he'd arrived.

John looked like someone had punched him in the stomach. He sat back down at the table, lifted his bottle of beer to his lips, and gulped it down like it was water.

Chas gripped the shelf and pulled himself up, his head still pounding. He grabbed the ice-cold bottle of beer, screwed the cap back on, and pressed it against the bump that was forming where his head had hit the bookcase. "You tried to save a girl from a demon," said Chas slowly, "And you damned her by mistake?"

"You're a clever one," said John, his voice hoarse. "Manny brought her back to life before her soul could descend into Hell, but the demon that nabbed her still has a tiny scrap of her soul down there." He took another swig from his bottle. "I gave my life to that feathery bastard, but I couldn't save her from Hell. Most I could do was...postpone the inevitable."

Chas rubbed the back of his head with the cold bottle. "For an angel, he seemed kind of-"

"Like an arse?" John shook his head. "Christ, angels. They're all like that."


	5. five: so alive

**simple twist of fate**

by red-starshine

 **part five: so alive**

* * *

Chas lightly brushed his fingers against where his skull had hit the bookcase and was rewarded with a driving pain where the skin was beginning to swell. There was a sharp, pounding ache at the bottom of his head, pulsating in time to the beat of his heart, and it didn't seem to be going away.

Until it abruptly did, like someone had thrown a switch inside his brain to turn off the pain.

The absence of pain was enough for him to wince. "The fuck?" murmured Chas.

John blearily wiped a hand across his face. "What?"

Chas pressed down on the spot again, lightly at first and then again harder when there was no pain or even a dull ache. He couldn't feel the bump anymore either.

"My head doesn't hurt anymore."

John's eyebrows lifted. "What?" He stood up, almost empty bottle of beer forgotten, and walked behind Chas. "Sit down."

Chas sat down at the table, tilting his head down. He felt John carefully move his fingers through his hair, feeling for the bump that wasn't there. "This doesn't hurt at all?"

"Nope."

John was quiet for a moment. "Sit tight," he said, and then walked to the collection of cobweb-covered artifacts taking up one wall. Chas saw him select a dagger the size of a bread-knife and pull off the thin scabbard, revealing a long, serrated silver blade. He also grabbed a white dish towel from the kitchen. "I want to see something. Hold out your hand."

Chas did as he was asked, but with a growing sense of trepidation as John held the tip of the knife over his palm. "What are you doing?"

"Relax, I'm just going to make a small cut," said John. "It'll sting, but I won't make it too deep." He frowned, clamping a hand around Chas's wrist to keep him steady.

"Why?" asked Chas, even as the pieces were falling into place. He just didn't like the picture that was starting to form.

John's eyes flicked up to his, and he somehow managed to look both innocent and incredibly guilty at the same time. "Hope you're not squeamish, mate," John said instead of answering him, placing the tip of the knife against the thin skin covering his palm.

Chas grunted when the knife pierced his skin. It hurt even though John did it quick, blood welling from the cut. When he pulled the knife away, a thin red line ran across Chas's palm.

John dabbed at the blood with the towel, cleaning it away from the cut he'd made.

As John and Chas watched in silence, their heads almost touching, the skin on Chas's palm slowly joined back together until the only sign John had made the cut at all was a faint raised line, like an old scar, and a smear of blood on his hand.

Chas wrenched his hand away from John. He pressed his fingers against where John had made the cut.

He didn't feel any pain. Only his nails digging into the skin hurt, and not in the way that a fresh cut should.

"John, what the fuck did you do?" he growled.

John looked down, cleaning the knife with a clean corner of the towel. "What I had to do," he said. "To bring you back."

"So, I should be dead, but I'm not. I should be injured, but I'm not," said Chas. "What the hell is going on with me?" Chas froze as a truly horrible thought occurred to him. "Am I a zombie?"

John looked almost disgusted. "No."

"Vampire?"

"No," John repeated louder. He stood up and grabbed Chas's hands again, "Look, Chas, you're still human. I didn't do anything to change that. You're not going to crave brains or starting drinking blood." He glanced aside, his eyes landing on the scar. "As far as I can tell, this is a side effect of the spell I cast to bring you back to life. It would repair the damage to your body, restart your heart, make you live again, but the magic'd keep going even after you were revived. I think, any injury you get now, your body will heal itself from in short order."

"Then stop it," said Chas, staring at John. "Make it go away."

"Can't, mate," said John. "That spell's the only thing keeping your body going. Even if I thought I could stop the healing, I wouldn't want to risk you dying again if I thought wrong. The magic won't work if I tried to cast it again."

Chas didn't say anything.

John sighed. "The spell I cast on you," he started after a moment. "It's very old, very complicated. Dates back to the Dark Ages. Supposedly Merlin was the one who came up with it, but it's not like I can ask him, so who knows, really? Most mages nowadays think it's a myth, or something important's missing – nobody's been able to make it work in hundreds of years."

"And you could?" said Chas.

"It's not a matter of the spell being incomplete or made up at all. The opposite, actually," said John. "The spell is so complex it's sentient, in a way. You have to be using it for what it deems to be the right reasons in order for it to work. Casting it for bragging rights or because you want to create an unstoppable killing machine won't cut it."

"But," said John quietly. "If you want to bring a good man back whose life was cut short, who died trying to save others, and the magic agrees, it'll work." John looked up at him. "That's why you're the only one I could bring back from the fire, Chas. It could only work once, and I wanted it to be you."

Chas considered what John had said. "What you're saying is that the spell that brought me back to life was...some kind of character test?"

"For both of us. I had to be casting it for mostly unselfish reasons, and you had to be, I don't know, someone who deserved another go-around at life."

Chas stared at John. He shook his head, feeling very, very tired. In the few hours since he'd woken up in a morgue, he'd helped John send one of the other victims of the fire on her way to the afterlife, been transported over eight hundred miles to Atlanta by taking a single step into John's House of Mystery (which still sounded like a cheap tourist trap, like something out of one of the cartoons Geraldine liked to watch), been thrown into a bookcase by an actual angel, and now had discovered that the same spell that'd brought him back to life also made his body heal itself if he was hurt.

"Please tell me you have more booze," said Chas after a moment.

John's mouth split into a grin. "Well, you happen to be in luck," he said. "I've got lots."


	6. six: i saw the light

**simple twist of fate**

by red-starshine

 **part six: i saw the light**

* * *

Chas took the six empty beer bottles into the small kitchenette, leaving them near the sink. His stomach rumbled, reminding him that he hadn't had anything to eat since last night – no, five days ago. No wonder he felt so hungry.

In the main room of the House, John's head was resting on the table, and Chas couldn't tell if he had passed out or not. John wasn't exactly tiny, but he'd seemed determined to work his way through that twelve-pack while complaining how watery American beer tasted.

John was still somewhat of an enigma to him - impossible to figure out, although he had the nagging feeling John had let him in more than he usually did with other people.

The small clock above the stove read that it was few minutes past 6 AM, and Chas decided that an early breakfast couldn't hurt. John's fridge seemed to be decently stocked with the essentials, although some of the fresh produce appeared to be a little on the older side. Unsurprisingly, there was a lot of microwaveable dinners-for-one in the freezer and bags of junk food strewn over the counters.

But the eggs, milk and butter all appeared to still be good, so Chas looked around the cupboards until he found a small skillet and a bowl.

He broke three eggs into the bowl, giving them a quick wisk to break the yolks before he added a few splashes of milk. He melted a small amount of butter in the skillet, trying to coat as much of the skillet as possible to keep the eggs from sticking. The egg-and-milk mixture sizzled slightly as it met the hot skillet, and Chas let it sit for a moment before scraping at the bottom of the skillet with a spatula to scramble the eggs. He sprinkled some of the dried chives and pepper from the spice rack on the eggs to keep it from being too bland – fresh would've been better but John didn't have any. Chas usually made the eggs at home with shredded cheese and a side of buttered toast, but the block of cheddar in John's fridge was rock-hard and the loaf of bread looked like a science fair experiment with all the white and green mold growing on it.

He hadn't realized John had gotten up from the table until he asked, "That breakfast?" sounding like he was about three inches away from Chas's ear.

It took everything Chas had to not jump. Instead, he nodded, taking the skillet off the burner when the eggs were not too runny, not too dry. "Can you get me two plates?"

John went to one of the cupboards and brought him the plates, watching in silence as Chas divided the mass of steaming scrambled eggs into two with the spatula and slid it onto the plates.

"Grab some forks and napkins too?" Chas called back as he carried the plates to the table, placing one where John had been sitting. Grumbling, John brought the forks and napkins to the table, dropping them in the middle of the table.

Chas had gone back into the kitchenette to grab the carton of orange juice from the fridge and two glasses. When he came back to the table with the orange juice, John was poking at the eggs with his fork with a peculiar look on his face. Almost pensive.

"Don't like it?" asked Chas. "I can make something else..."

John shook his head. "Not that. Just..." He paused, and shook his head again. "Don't matter. They look great, Chas." He took a bite, and his eyes nearly rolled back in pleasure. "Jesus. I'd forgotten what it was like to eat something that hadn't been cooked in a toaster or microwave," he said. "These are excellent, mate."

"They're just eggs," said Chas, taking a bite of his own eggs. To his relief, they tasted fine - not the best he'd ever made, but not the worst either.

John smirked. "You cook a lot?"

Chas shrugged. "Yeah. It's a bit of a hobby." When he and Renee had still been together, he'd usually cooked dinner for the three of them, or just for himself and Geraldine on the nights that Renee was working late. Cooking was something he'd enjoyed, while Renee looked at it as more of a chore. There was a satisfaction he got at looking at the food he'd prepared and knowing he'd made it himself, it had turned out well, and that whoever he'd prepared it for would enjoy it too.

He felt a small thrum of that satisfaction as John finished his eggs and downed the last of the orange juice in his glass.

"All right," said John, standing up. "Hate to eat and run, but we've got places to be."

"We do?" said Chas.

"Brooklyn Hospital," said John, his good mood evaporating before Chas's eyes. "Tess wasn't the only person from the fire who'll be needing me services today, unfortunately. " He grabbed his trenchcoat from the back of his chair, shrugging it on.

Chas thought back to what John had said to him in the morgue: 'Three more've been hanging on but won't make it through the night.' With Tess gone, that left two others from the bar fire who'd die today. He sighed.

John pulled out the keys from the pocket of his trenchcoat, selecting one. He stuck it into the keyhole of the door leading outside and twisted. When John pulled the door open, a sterile hospital corridor was on the other side.

"That will never not be weird," said Chas, taking the step from the House of Mystery in Atlanta into the hallway of the ICU in Brooklyn.

John good-naturedly patted him on the back. "You're doing good, mate." He closed the door behind him, and slid the ring of keys back into his pocket.

Chas glanced down the long corridor of rooms, almost all of them occupied by patients who were in danger of dying at any moment. "How do you tell which room's the right one?"

"Someone who's about to die gives off a very distinctive feeling," said John, sticking his hands in his pockets. "It's not hard to pick up on them if you know what you're doing. In fact..." he stopped in the middle of the hallway, a sly grin spreading across his face. "...I bet you could find them."

Chas shook his head. "Me? No."

"Here," said John, grabbing his sleeve. "Humor me for a moment and shut your eyes."

Feeling like he was probably making a mistake, Chas did as John asked.

"All right," said John, lightly placing his hands on Chas's arms. "There are eight patients in the ICU at the moment. Picture eight little golden whorls of life spinnin' round - those are their souls. All of them are very sick and weak, obviously, otherwise they wouldn't be in the ICU. But right now there's one that's sicker and weaker than the others."

"John, this isn't-"

"Don't talk, just listen to me. Can you feel that, Chas? The one soul here that's so much closer to death, frail and wavering, than it is to life, and edging closer with every moment? It's in pain, lonely and frightened, and it doesn't know what will happen, and that fear is growing stronger and stronger as its body starts to fail, organs shutting down." John let out a breath, and Chas hadn't quite realized before how close he was. "You can feel that, can't you Chas?

Chas gave a hesitant nod. As John described it, he almost could feel the life of the other souls in the ICU around him, and the one soul that was quickly unraveling, dying.

"Good," said John. "Then where's our little lost soul?"

Chas thought a moment, and then pointed to a room four doors down.

John turned his head to see which room Chas was pointing at, then grinned. "Very nice, Mr. Chandler. A perfect score on your first try."


	7. seven: only happy when it rains

**simple twist of fate**

by red-starshine

 **part seven: only happy when it rains**

* * *

There was no one, ghost or living, outside the door to the hospital room this time, just a heavy feeling of foreboding that seemed to get worse the closer John and Chas got to the room.

Somehow, knowing what was waiting for them on the other side of the door this time only made it worse.

John pushed open the door to the room (the placard read 'COOKE' this time) and Chas peered inside.

Like with Tess, the body lying in the hospital bed was badly burned and covered in white bandages. Only part of his dark hair was shaved off. A tall man stood by the one window in the small room, staring out at the sun rising over the trees and the towering granite monument in Fort Greene Park. He was dressed in a black canvas jacket with faded denim pants, a silver wallet chain hanging from his pockets. His curly hair was a dark brown and reached the collar of his jacket.

He looked familiar, but Chas didn't know him, couldn't put a name to his face.

Cooke leaned his head against the window and let out a loud exhale of breath when he heard the door open. He muttered something quietly.

"What was that, mate? Couldn't quite make it out," said John, lighting a cigarette. Chas wrinkled his nose slightly at the smell and resisted the urge to reach over John's shoulder and pinch it out.

Cooke turned from the window, his eyes wide. He was young, barely looked old enough to drink. He took in John and then Chas, both looking at him and not at his body lying in the hospital bed.

"You can see me," said the man quietly, his voice hoarse. He took a shaky half-step towards John. "No one else does. They look at me like I'm not here."

"I know," said John. "Question is, do you?"

"Do I what?"

"Know why only me and my associate here," John gestured to Chas, "Can see you."

Cooke grimaced and then glanced at his body lying in the hospital bed. "I'm like some sort of ghost, right? But I'm not dead."

"Technically true, but you are hanging on by the thinnest of threads," said John with a sigh. "You do realize that, right? There's not going to be a miraculous recovery for you here. At this point, you're just running out the clock."

"But I'm not dead," repeated Cooke sullenly.

John rolled his eyes. "And here we go," he said quietly to Chas, his lit cigarette still dangling from his lip, before turning his attention back to Cooke. "In less than five minutes, that's not going to be true, I'm afraid."

"But I'm not dead," said Cooke again with a scowl, his voice lower, like what John was saying was pissing him off. The temperature in the hospital room, already cool, suddenly plunged. Frost quickly spread across the window behind Cooke's soul.

It was unpleasantly reminiscent of being inside the morgue's cooler.

"John," said Chas warningly, placing a hand on his shoulder. He could see his breath in the air. "Careful."

John nodded to Chas. "Mate, I know your emotions are runnin' high right now," he said to Cooke, "But you need to calm down."

Cooke's eyes, which had been brown before, turned white, completely erasing the pupil and iris. "But I'm not dead!" he yelled at John, his voice raw. A crack ran across the window

John pinched the bridge of his nose. "Jesus," he muttered.

"What the hell is this?" said Chas.

"Soddin' git's going poltergeist," said John sourly, throwing his cigarette down. "When souls don't go gentle into that good night, sometimes they can get a bit nasty, and then they cause all sorts of trouble. If he was already dead, this would be much worse." With an irritated sigh, he moved towards the body in the hospital bed.

"But I'm not dead!" Cooke screamed again. The window behind him shattered entirely, and the heavy tray table next to Cooke lifted into the air and shot towards John.

"Get down!" Chas tackled John, and they fell to the floor together in a tangle of limbs and John's trenchcoat. The table hit the wall next to the door a moment later, tearing a large hole in the eggshell-white plaster.

Chas tried not to think about what that table could've done to John's head.

John groaned, pushing himself up from the floor. "Oh, that bastard's getting a foot up the arse," he muttered.

"How do we stop him?" asked Chas.

"You try and talk him down," said John. "Maybe you'll have better luck than I did. "

"What're you going to do?"

"Me? I'm going to get that bloody soul of his to the afterlife, even if I have to kick him in the bollocks to do it," said John with an irritated sneer. "Look, keep him distracted and I'll try and get this taken care of."

Chas nodded. He peered over the edge of the hospital bed while John sat cross-legged in the space between the bed and the wall and began murmuring a spell in Latin.

Cooke's black boots were hovering at least a foot above the floor on the other side of the bed, his mouth turned into a feral grimace. The soul rose higher up into the air until his head almost touched the ceiling.

"Cooke?" said Chas, looking up at him. The blank white eyes just looked wrong in his face.

Cooke growled like a rabid dog as Chas slowly stood up, but did not send more furniture hurtling in his direction.

No, not like a rabid dog, Chas realized. A frightened dog – one that was in pain and was lashing out because it didn't know what else to do.

"Cooke, you're hurting pretty bad, aren't you?" said Chas.

That only elicited a thin hiss from Cooke, his vacant white eyes following Chas's every movement.

"Look, why don't you come down from there," said Chas calmly, walking around the foot of the bed to Cooke's side. He held out a hand to Cooke. "I think you'll feel better back on the ground."

Cooke stared at Chas's outstreched hand blankly, like he was trying to figure out the meaning behind it. But he hesitantly took it, drifting down towards the floor until his shoes touched the white tiled floor.

Cooke stared down at the floor, and when he looked at Chas again, his eyes were brown. Brown and full of tears. He clutched tightly at Chas's hand, the cold biting into Chas's skin. "But I'm no..." he began, then stopped. He swallowed. "I'm scared."

"I understand," said Chas. He gave Cooke's trembling hand a reassuring squeeze. "I'll stay here with you until it happens."

Cooke was silent for a long time. "My mother was here a few hours ago," he said. "But she left. I-I wanted her to stay, but she didn't see or hear me no matter what I did. I just - I don't want to be alone."

"It's all right," said Chas. "You won't be."

Cooke bowed his head and then let out a breath, looked up at him with obvious relief.

Then his soul vanished, fading away into tendrils of smoke.


	8. eight: the sound of sinners

**simple twist of fate**

by red-starshine

 **part eight: the sound of sinners**

* * *

Chas watched the soul dissipate, and then turned to John, who was still sitting on the floor, staring at him in complete surprise. It was slightly disconcerting.

"I don't like that look on your face," said Chas, shifting uncomfortably under John's stare. "What's wrong?"

John let out a short huff of astonishment as he stood up. "Nothing's wrong," he said, his eyes still wide, like something impossible had just happened in front of his eyes and he still couldn't believe it had really happened. "You got him to cross over. That's good. Great, actually."

Something about this wasn't making sense to Chas. "Then why are you staring at me like that?"

"You got a soul going poltergeist to cross over," John repeated slower, a grin spreading across his face. "Just by talking to him."

"Yeah." Chas glanced at John quizzically. "Isn't that what you told me to do? Talk him down?"

John rolled his eyes, like Chas was purposefully missing his point. "I wanted you to distract him so I could do my magic without him ripping the TV off the wall and throwing it at my face. I didn't think Cooke would just...bugger off to the afterlife like that."

Chas looked at John again, confusion written all over his face. "But that's the point, right?"

"Well, yes and no," said John, sticking his hands in the pockets of his trenchcoat. "Yes, the end result is supposed to be his soul over in the afterlife instead of scaring the shit out of his mum, but when a soul starts to turn bad like that, it's...difficult to persuade them to cross over voluntarily." Chas started to open his mouth, but John cut him off before he could speak. "And that was voluntary, I was still in the middle of my invocation when he crossed."

"What's that mean?"

"Means you did better than I'd thought you would," said John, giving Chas an appraising look. "But look sharp, we've still go-"

The door to Cooke's room banged open, and John flinched, stepping away from the door as the younger doctor they'd seen in Tess's room and one of the nurses entered the room. The nurse's foot caught on the tray table Cooke had thrown at John, which was still lying on the floor, and she stumbled, almost falling into the doctor's back.

"Let's go," said John quietly, slipping into the hallway, unseen by the doctor or nurse.

Chas pushed the tray table out of the way of the door with his foot, and then followed John back into the hall of the ICU.

"As I was saying, we've got a little bit of time before our last appointment here," said John. He flicked the top of his lighter.

"And then what?" said Chas.

"That's really up to you, mate," said John, his voice carefully neutral as he flicked the top of his lighter open and closed again. "You can go back to your old life, say that the authorities misidentified your body. A bureaucrat screwing up somewhere is a lot more plausible than you coming back from the dead, after all. You could pick up from where you left off."

Chas stayed quiet. Funny how that seemed less appealing now than it had only a few short hours ago.

"Or," John continued, opening the doors leading out of the ICU. "You could stay on with me, use these skills as you have. I'm not going to lie - you're bloody useful in this line of work, and very nice to look at, too."

Chas glanced at him in amusement, one eyebrow raised.

"What? You're not exactly an unattractive man," said John with a sly grin that was starting to grow on Chas. "And it's been a while since I've had a conversation with anyone that wasn't centered around their inevitable impending death, let alone had someone buy me a drink." His eyes were warm when he glanced at Chas. "Thanks for that, by the way."

Chas looked away. If John had asked him that question when he'd first woken up in the morgue, maybe it would've been easier for him to make the choice, maybe not - but he would've gone back to his old life. Now, after everything he'd seen since then, what he'd done, he found it difficult to consider completely turning his back on it, turning his back on the man who had brought him from the dead, showed him another world

And John wasn't rough on the eyes either. Chas blamed the blond hair - he'd always liked how blond hair looked, and John's hair was a rich golden-brown color. Almost like honey.

John straightened up. "Again, it's your choice. You don't have to make up your mind right now," he said. "But I do have one question for you."

"What?"

John looked up at him. "Was anyone in your family psychic, could they see ghosts, or had any kind of magic? Because you seem to have a talent for this that I can't quite explain other than heredity, since it's bloody obvious you're not trained in magic at all."

Chas began to shake his head 'no', then froze. "Um."

"Um?" said John when Chas didn't say anything else. "Something you want to share, Chas?"

Chas looked down at the floor. It seemed safer than looking at John, who seemed to notice everything, no matter how small. "My mother worked as a medium. When I was a kid." He paused, thinking about things he'd tried very hard to forget since his mother had died. "I thought she was just bilking people out of their money and making everything up, but she had people come from all over for her seances."

"Huh. Now there's something to think about," said John. "Maybe she wasn't as full of it as you'd thought."

Chas tried not to shudder, which John picked up on. Thankfully, he changed the subject instead of asking Chas any more questions about his mother. "I'm going to go mad if I keep this 'don't pay attention to us' spell up for much longer," John said, pulling out the keys to the House of Mystery. "You mind if we head back to my place for a bit?"

Chas shook his head. "That's fine."

John unlocked a door marked 'SUPPLY CLOSET' with one of the keys. The door opened into the now-familiar main room of the House.

"After you, mate," said John.


	9. nine: hush

**simple twist of fate**

by red-starshine

 **part nine: hush**

* * *

Chas had one foot across the threshold of the door when he stopped.

"Look," he heard a familiar voice say down the hall, in a clipped tone he recognized a little too well. "All I want to know is where his body is. I don't care if it's not ready for the funeral home yet, but the city morgue in Brooklyn said they sent it to this hospital when they ran out of room and after that phone call I got this morning, all I've been getting here is the run-around. You think I don't recognize a C.Y.A. maneuver when I see one?"

"I'm sorry, Ms. Chandler," said someone else. "We have records of receiving your ex-husband's body from the city morgue, and we have records that he was placed in our morgue on-site, but it doesn't appear that we still have him."

A brief pause. "May I ask who does?"

Chas started to turn around, but John placed a hand on Chas's arm. "Not a good idea," he said.

"But that's Renee," protested Chas. "My ex. She thinks I'm still dead."

"Even worse idea," said John. "And I'm the patron saint of bad ideas."

Staring at John coldly, Chas pulled his arm free and quietly walked to the end of the hall, peering around the corner cautiously.

The hall ended in a large, nearly empty waiting room. The back of Renee's familiar blonde head was on the other side of the waiting room, in front of a long receptionist's desk.

Seated in one of the chairs less than ten feet away from him was his daughter, who was looking down at the floor and swinging her legs back and forth, trying to ignore the discussion her mother was having with the nurse.

She looked miserable. She sniffled and rubbed at her reddened eyes, and Chas nearly felt his heart stop again. She was crying about him. As far as she knew, he was dead.

"Geraldine," Chas said quietly, involuntarily taking a step forward.

He'd thought he'd said it too softly for her to hear, but Gerladine's head shot up. Her eyes widened when she saw him. She raced out of the chair and attached herself to Chas's middle. "Daddy!"

"Hey there, sweetie," said Chas, stroking her hair as she began to quietly cry. "I'm so sorry. I thought I was never going to see you again."

"Dad," sobbed Geraldine, burying her tear-streaked face against her father's sweater. "What happened? Mom said you'd died."

"He did," said John, walking behind Chas. "But he's not dead anymore, however. I take it you're Chas's little daughter?"

Geraldine stared up at John with wide eyes and gave a slight nod. Her eyes never left John's face. "Who're you?"

"Oh, so you can see me too, eh?" said John.

Slightly puzzled, Geraldine nodded again.

"Thought as much. In the blood, I suppose. Well, you can call me John, love."

"John's a friend," said Chas, placing one hand on John's shoulder. "He's the reason I'm alive right now, honey."

Chas hadn't thought it was possible, but Geraldine's eyes got even wider. "Are you a doctor?" she asked John, detaching herself from her father.

John snickered. "That's a better guess than your father's. He asked if I was an angel. The answer's still no, however."

"But you brought my dad back," said Geraldine, a look of confusion on her face.

"I did," said John. "And it was very, very complicated and I can never ever do it again."

Geraldine paused. "You're a mad scientist?"

John gave an amused laugh. "That's closer."

Chas heard the familiar clack-clack-clack of Renee's heels on tile. "Geraldine, I told you to not wander off," she said, completely unaware of her dead ex-husband and the blond man in a trenchcoat standing behind Geraldine.

John murmured something in Latin beneath his breath. A hum of magic in Chas's bones that he'd only been peripherally aware of faded.

"Mom," grinned Geraldine, taking hold of Renee's hand and tugging her down the hallway. "Look!"

Renee looked up, and her face turned pale. "Oh my God." She reached out towards Chas, then jerkily pulled her hand back before she could touch him. "Chas?" she said.

"Hi, Renee." He didn't know what else he could say, he didn't know how she'd react to seeing her supposedly dead ex-husband. Instead, he swallowed, his throat suddenly dry. "It's me."

Renee placed a hand on his arm, feeling the warm skin. "God, they told us that you were dead when they pulled you out of that fire," she said shakily.

"I was helping a girl escape," said Chas. "I should be dead."

"But you were," insisted Renee, meeting Chas's eyes. There was dark rings under her eyes, like she hadn't slept in days. "I had to identify your body after the fire. I remember that very, very clearly, Chas."

Chas opened his mouth.

"And don't give me any bull about that not being you," said Renee in a sudden burst of frustration, "I know that was your body they showed me."

Chas closed his mouth.

"John saved him!" said Geraldine before either of them could saying anything .

"John?" said Renee quizzically. She looked around the hallway, her eyes passing over John without seeing him. "Who's John?"

Chas turned back to John, who just raised a finger to his mouth and made a quiet 'shhh'.

"It's a little complicated, and you'll think I'm nuts if I go into details," said Chas. "But I was dead, then...I wasn't."

One of Renee's eyebrows raised. "Is that right," she said slowly. "This wouldn't have anything to do with your body mysteriously vanishing from the hospital's morgue last night, would it? I got a call a few hours ago saying they'd misplaced your body."

Chas ducked his head slightly, feeling the back of his neck flush. "That would be a pretty big part of it, yeah."

Renee was quiet for a long moment. "But you're alive now," she said. It almost sounded like a question.

"Yeah."

"So what happens next?"

"I don't know," admitted Chas. "I have to stay here for a little bit longer. After that..." He trailed off, unsure.

"You have to stay here as a patient?" asked Renee, looking slightly relieved that something was starting to make sense again.

Chas shook his head. "No."

Renee looked at him blankly for a moment, the silence hanging between them awkwardly. "You and I will talk about this later," she told him evenly, quietly, but firmly. "I want to know what's really going on with you, no matter how crazy it sounds."

"Of course." After everything she and Geraldine had been through, they deserved to hear the truth. If they would believe what had happened to him was another matter - Chas almost didn't believe it himself.

Renee nodded slightly to herself. "All right," she said. She placed a hand on her daughter's shoulder. "Time for us to go, Geraldine."

Geraldine hugged her father's torso tightly. "I'm glad you're not dead, daddy."

Chas couldn't think of anything to say to that either, except the obvious statement. "I love you, sweetie. With all my heart."

John waved behind Chas as Renee led Geraldine into the waiting room. Geraldine waved back. "Bye John! Thank you for saving my dad!"

Renee gave her a strange look.

"That went better than I expected," said John after Renee and Geraldine were out of earshot. "No screaming at all."


	10. ten: the chain

**simple twist of fate**

by red-starshine

 **part ten: the chain**

* * *

Back at the House of Mystery, John flopped bonelessly onto the sofa near the fireplace, not bothering to take off his trenchcoat. He tilted his head back and let out a sigh.

Chas closed the door.

John's head tilted up slightly when he heard the door shut. "Don't suppose you'd be a mate and grab me a beer?"

"It's not even 7 in the morning yet," said Chas, still standing next to the door.

"Spoilsport," John groaned, letting his head drop back again. "I need some hair of the dog, head's killing me."

Chas sighed and headed into the kitchen. A moment later he reappeared with a small glass of water.

John glared at the water petulantly. "That better be vodka."

"You're dehydrated," said Chas, holding out the glass to him encouragingly. "Water's the best way to combat a hangover."

John glanced at him, a sardonic look on his face. "Yes, daddy." After a few moments of Chas staring at him while holding the water, John gave in. He sighed, took the glass of water and gulped it down.

Chas took the glass from John once it was empty. "Better?"

John covered his eyes with one arm and grunted, which Chas took to mean 'slightly'. In the time it took Chas to walk back into the kitchenette with the glass, wash it, put it back where he'd found it, and come back into the main room, John was out cold.

Chas turned towards John's collection of the bizarre and mystical. Books were piled high, covered in cobwebs. Some looked hundreds of years old, the spines cracking. Acting as a bookend on one shelf was a tiny glass box, with a small dark purple gem softly glowing inside, near what looked to be a golden human skull inlaid with three rubies, two in each eye socket and one centered in the forehead. A blackened heart twitched slightly inside a glass jar.

Chas idly spun the small spherical astrolabe next to a map of the United States. On top of the map was a golden helmet in a large glass display case. It looked ancient, like an treasure stolen from a pharoh's tomb.

"What are you?" said Chas, carefully lifting open the lid.

"Sorry, but I wouldn't touch that if I were you," said an unfamiliar voice behind him.

A man with dark, messy hair was standing behind him, dressed in a loose-fitting black jacket, the white t-shirt underneath ripped around the collar. His jeans were ripped as well, from what appeared to be years of wear. He looked at Chas with downcast eyes. "It's the helmet of Nabu, an Egyptian god," said the man in an Irish accent. "That helmet's all that remains of him now. He likes to posses the people who touch it."

Chas quickly shut the lid.

"Touching any of the House's collection is probably not the best idea," the man suggested. "A lot of them are dangerous if you don't know what you're doing."

"But they're just sitting out there," said Chas. "Shouldn't they be locked up or something?"

"The House doesn't get very many visitors," said the man with a shrug. "And it's fairly resistant to smash-and-grabs. There isn't really a need."

Chas let that sink in. More information to mull through later. He turned back to the man with an apologetic grin. "I'm sorry. John didn't say someone else lived here -"

The man's eyes got even more sad. He reached for the glass case, but his hand passed through it as if he were made of vapor. "That's because I'm not alive."

Chas's eyebrows furrowed. As far as his own ability to sense the dead went, the man didn't feel like a ghost. He was more like a question mark – something he didn't know how to classify with his admittedly limited experience with spirits. "Who are you?"

The man gave him a melancholy smile. "You know, I don't really know anymore? My life when I alive feels like a bad dream that I forgot when I woke up. I know that it happened, but I can't remember much about it," he said. "John calls me 'Gaz', but I think that's more of a nickname. I guess you can call me that too."

"I'm Chas." He resisted the urge to hold out his hand for Gaz to shake. He wasn't sure if Gaz would be able to touch him like the other ghosts could, and reminding Gaz again that he was dead seemed almost cruel.

Gaz nodded. "I know. I saw you when you came to the House last night with John."

Chas felt a shiver run its way down his spine. Being watched without his knowledge creeped him out slightly. "Why didn't you come out then?" said Chas curiously. "I don't bite."

Gaz was silent for a long moment. "John doesn't seem to like it much when I'm around," he said quietly, his accent making it sound almost like a question. "I don't know why. So I tend to make myself scarce when he's around, unless I have something important that he needs to know regarding the House."

"Oh, you look after this place?"

"I'm tied to the House," said Gaz simply. "Whatever I was before, it's part of me now. I know what it knows. The House's residual power is what keeps me...aware, I guess? Most ghosts who don't cross over get, uh, stuck – fixated on something. I don't. But I can't leave this place."

"Must be lonely," said Chas offhandedly.

Gaz looked at him, his eyes large. "It's nice to talk to someone," he said finally. He turned back to the shelf and pointed to the golden skull on the shelf. "Did you know that's Pandora's box?"

"I thought that was a myth. Pandora was real?"

Gaz nodded. "She was, and that was the box that unleashed suffering onto the world." He paused, looking at the box. "I'm not sure why it's shaped like a skull."

"That was going to be my next question," said Chas. He pointed to one of the long swords displayed next to the map. "What's that over there?"

"The Sword of Night," said Gaz. "It's one of the enchanted swords in the House. It can sense danger, but it also compels whoever touches it to speak the truth."

"Huh. That's a weird power," said Chas.

Gaz shrugged but didn't disagree.

There was a groan from the sofa behind them as John began to wake up again. "Ow. Fuck. Chas?" he called, sounding like he was in pain. "Another water and a handful of whatever it is you call Panadol in the States would be greatly appreciated!"

Chas rolled his eyes. When he came out of the kitchenette, Gaz was gone.

John's eyes lit up when he saw the two white tablets in Chas's palm. "You are an angel, Chas," he said, taking the tablets and water. "And not one of those bloody arsehole ones." He knocked back the tablet and swallowed them down with the water. He winced slightly, and then looked up at Chas. "Something the matter? You look a bit shaken up."

Even hungover, John didn't miss anything. "I met Gaz."

John looked away from him, staring instead into the bottom of the glass. "Gaz? Well, he must like you, then. He didn't come out for Liv at all, and she was here for a week."

"John," Chas said. "Who is he? Why'd you tie him to the House instead of letting him cross over like the others?"

John cut him off, holding up a hand. "Look, mate, that's going to have to wait for at least another half an hour, or however long it takes for this rubbish medicine to kick in." He rubbed at his temples.

"You're hiding things from me, John. Why didn't you tell me about him last night?"

"Slipped me mind," said John tightly.

Chas stared at him for a moment. "I don't believe you," he said.

John let out an exasperated sigh, his shoulders slumping down. "Look mate, he's only been at the House for a few months. I thought from how he acted when Liv was here he wouldn't bother you."

"Liv?"

"That's another long and sordid tale," said John. "Although slightly easier to sum up. Liv was the daughter of the man who owned this place before I did, the Baron Winters. Before he died, we made an agreement that I'd look after the place, feed his cat, that kind of stuff, until I could find Liv. It took me months to track her down and bring her here. But she didn't know anything about magic, and after a few days of demons trying to kill her, she didn't want anything to do with it. Practically threw the keys back in my face and ran to the other side of the country to get away from this place. That's how the House of Mystery fell into my hands."


	11. eleven: when the world is running down

**simple twist of fate**

by red-starshine

 **part eleven: when the world is running down**

* * *

For some reason, Chas felt like he was standing on the edge of a cliff. "You have the House because the person who it was supposed to go to didn't want it?"

"Yeah," said John. "I'm its sloppy seconds. Really makes a mage feel pretty good about 'imself." He looked away from Chas, seemingly embarrassed by what he'd just said. "Anyway. I suppose it's for the best. Some people just can't hack this – magic and demons and angels and all that guff. It's a lot for a beginner to handle. If Liv felt she couldn't handle this responsibility, it's good that she got out when she did. Before she or anyone else could get hurt."

Chas could see where this was going. "John."

"I mean, can you imagine the damage a novice could do if they got their hands on some of this shite?" said John, not listening to Chas. "They'd blow the House sky-high at minimum. Blot the sun out from the sky for half the country, summon a minor go-."

"John!"

That seemed to finally draw John's attention. He looked up at Chas crossly. "What?"

"Are you worried I'll turn around and leave you alone, like Liv did?" asked Chas. "Throw in the towel because all the magic is too much for me? Is that what this is about?"

John looked slightly taken aback. "Uh-" He looked down, and that by itself told Chas the answer.

Chas sat down on the sofa next to John, their thighs touching. "Hm?"

John smiled slightly. "Can't get anything past you, mate," he said weakly.

There was a moment of silence between them as Chas gathered his thoughts. He had to make up his mind as to what would happen next. What he wanted to do next, even though he knew John was still holding something back from him. Chas had never been very good with words, and he had to handle this carefully, like he was about to walk over broken glass.

"John, look - I'm still here," said Chas. "After everything that's happened to me today." He lightly placed one hand on top of John's. John's fingers twitched slightly underneath his, but John made no move to pull away, so he left it there.

"I mean, it's been a very...eventful day," Chas continued. "An angel threw me into that bookcase. I watched you send ghosts on to the afterlife. I had a nice talk with the ghost who haunts your mystery house. And it all started with me waking up after you brought me back from the dead. If I was going to run from this, run from you, I would be gone already." He leaned in closer to John. "So what does that tell you?" he said, his voice low.

"Mostly that you have no sense of self preservation," said John with a slight tremor in his voice, looking down at Chas's hand. "But that's all right, neither do I."

"Makes sense," said Chas, bringing his other hand to John's face. "We just don't know any better." He could feel John tremble slightly as he ran his hand slowly down the side of John's face. John closed his eyes, leaning into Chas's hand. John's lips parted slightly, in anticipation, and that was enough.

Chas's lips met John's, and John couldn't help but moan, his arms moving around Chas's back, fingers digging into the soft fabric of his sweater.

John tasted like stale beer, cigarettes, and aspirin, but Chas didn't care.

In the moment, it felt right. This was what supposed to be happening: Chas making out with John on a leather sofa inside John's emporium of strange and mystical artifacts.

John's fingers played with the hair near the back of his neck, and just that simple gesture, the briefest touch, felt good. It made Chas feel better than he'd felt in months.

John gently broke away, leaning his head against the side of Chas's neck. "Christ," John said, but it sounded like he was smiling.

Chas could only let out a snort. John's head was still tantalizingly close to his, and with a sigh he let his head rest against John's soft blond hair. John let out a soft, pleased-sounding moan.

"Seems a shame to say this," said John after a moment, "But we've still got one more soul to collect."

Chas groaned. The last soul from the bar fire. He was going to explode if he didn't see this through to its conclusion. "God. Can it wait?"

John nuzzled his head against Chas's neck, pressing a quick kiss to the skin there, before answering. "Mate, I would be the happiest man on Earth and all its parallel dimensions if it could, but that's not in the cards. We've got to get going quick, 'fore they snuff it."

With a sigh, Chas pulled away, even as the rest of his body cried out for him to get back in there and kiss John some more.

John gave him the briefest of smiles before glancing down at his hands, still on Chas's arms. One finger idly ran down the bare skin of Chas's arm, below the cuff of his sweater to the knuckles of Chas's hand, as if he were fascinated by the lines of bone beneath the skin.

Chas watched him with a bemused expression. "John," he said. "What were you just saying about that soul?"

John jerked his hand away and stood up. "Right. Sorry," said John, reaching into the pocket of his trenchcoat for the keys. "Let's make it fast. Then we can get back to the snogging." He looked around the House of Mystery. "And possibly without the bloody audience this time too," he added accusingly. "Gaz."

There was a flurry of sound from one corner of the House, like something nervously skittering away.

John exaggeratedly rolled his eyes. "Cheeky blighter."

That got a light chuckle out of Chas as he stood up. He smoothed John's hair down, where their quick make-out session had caused it to spike up slightly. "Later," he agreed. "C'mon, let's get that soul to the afterlife."


	12. twelve: the card cheat

**simple twist of fate**

by red-starshine

 **part twelve: the card cheat**

* * *

Chas let the door to the House close before he turned to John, who was reciting what Chas assumed was the 'don't notice us' spell. "All right, so what's the deal with Gaz?" he asked when John was finished.

John sighed, leaning against the door. "Gary. His name was Gary Lester," he said hollowly. "He was a magician too. We were mates, way back when. 'Til the night my exorcism failed and that girl's soul was taken by a demon. Gaz ran off, and I didn't see 'im again for years and years, till he shows up on the House's doorstep, strung out on smack and sayin' he'd accidentally let a hunger demon loose in airport." John glanced away. "The only way to kill the hunger demon was to seal it inside a host's body. Without it being able to move into a new host once it killed the current one, it died too. And Gaz," John said slowly, "Was its final host. He died inside the House after days and days of agony while the demon starved."

"Why's he still at the House?"

John shrugged. "I tried to send 'im on his way right after he died, but he wouldn't budge. But the House has its own consciousness, and I think that the House tried to save him the only way it knew how, by taking his soul into itself. What's there now...I've no idea just how much of it is really Gaz and how much is the House." He took a deep breath and pushed himself away from the door and into the ICU hallway. "Anyway, we're wastin' time. C'mon, mate."

John and Chas walked into the room of the last victim, whose last name was Taylor according to the placard on the door. To Chas's surprise, Taylor was sitting upright in the hospital bed and turned to look at them as they entered the room. Like the other two, he was heavily bandaged, but his skin looked less severely burned, pink around the edges of the bandages like he'd merely had a bad sunburn. He pulled off a bandage covering his hand, and the skin quickly began to heal from puckered, dead black flesh to smooth pink.

"My word," said Taylor primly, glancing down at his fully-healed hand. "If it isn't John Constantine. Just a little too late, as usual."

John squinted at the man as he stopped near the bed. "The Demon Buer. What the hell are you doing in that poor sod's body?"

Buer lifted Taylor's head and gave them a cold smile. His eyes were almost entirely yellow. "This unfortunate man held on for as long as he could. But he just wanted his pain and suffering to end. Now I'm merely granting his request."

"Yeah, and then sending his soul to Hell once you're done fixing up his body," said John flatly. "Did you tell 'im that bit before he agreed to let you in?"

Buer shrugged Taylor's shoulders. "Oops," he said with a wide insincere grin.

"Right," said John, pushing up the sleeves of his trenchcoat. He thrust out a hand towards Taylor's body. " _Per júdicem vivórum et mortuórum_!"

"A banishing spell? How trite," said Buer. He lifted the covers from the bed, revealing legs that were mottled with rapidly-healing burns, new flesh regrowing over the dead tissue. Buer slid off the bed and wobbled slightly as his feet touched the floor. "After all, you need a little bit of conviction for that to work. I'm not some rank and file demon, Constantine."

"Oh, yes you bloody are," said John. " _Sed enim mundi Creator_!"

Taylor's head violently rocked to the side like he'd been slapped. He smiled a moment later, his eyes still bright yellow. "Better, but not good enough." With that, he ran towards John, hands curled like claws.

Chas moved in front of John, taking the brunt of the blow meant for him. Buer's fingers dug into his chest, like he was trying to rip off his skin. Chas grabbed Buer's arm above the elbow and twisted hard in a direction human arms were not meant to go in.

Buer shrieked as Chas hooked his free arm around Buer's neck in a chokehold and forced him down onto his knees.

" _Qui habet potestatem mittere in infernum_!" shouted John without missing a beat, his voice strong. "Jesus, mate. Remind me never to get on your bad side," he said to Chas.

Buer bucked underneath Chas, making a noise like he was being skinned alive. "Less talk, more magic," Chas ground out. It was taking most of his strength to keep Buer restrained, but Chas had a definite height and weight advantage over Taylor's still-healing body.

"Wait! I'll leave!" said Buer, his voice rasping. "Do not finish your spell and I will leave this man's body. Please don't send me back to the First of the Fallen without a soul to show for my efforts."

"Sorry, you had your chance to go quietly," said John. "Now you're getting on the express train straight back to Hell. _Ut abir_ -"

"Stop!" shouted Buer.

John paused in the middle of the spell, one eyebrow raised.

"Perhaps we could make a deal," wheedled Buer in desperation. "An exchange? I know all there is to know about the inner workings of Hell, things that even you do not know."

Chas rolled his eyes. "John, finish the banishment spell," he urged.

John stood still, his hand still held out in front of him towards Buer. As Chas watched out of the corner of his eye, John slowly brought it down. "Where's the rest of Astra's soul?" he said to Buer.

"John!" shouted Chas in disbelief. "Send him back to Hell!"

John ignored him. "Nergal took a part of Astra Logue's soul down to Hell with him. Only part of it was restored to her body. How would I get the rest of it back and remove Hell's claim on her?"

"You are mistaken," said Buer after a moment, obviously confused. "That girl's soul is not in any demon's possession. Hell has no claim upon her."

John took a step towards Buer, his hands balling up into fists. "You lyin' gobshite."

"It's the truth, I swear it!" said Buer in a rush, his voice breaking in panic. "That angel took her soul, all of it, from Nergal! Ripped it right out of Nergal's arms and took it back aboveground! If anyone still has that girl's soul, it's the angel!"


	13. thirteen: ball and chain

**simple twist of fate**

by red-starshine

 **part thirteen: ball and chain**

* * *

Buer, in Taylor's body, was breathing heavily, like a cornered animal. He was still tense, waiting for John's reaction.

"The angel?" said John quietly.

Buer gave a weak nod. "Nergal was...not pleased afterwards."

John sighed and then lifted his hand back up towards Chas and Buer. "Ut abire ex regno protinus," he said, and Chas could feel the power of the spell, mercilessly pulling at something inside the body he was holding down. Chas grunted and kept him restrained. He could feel the intense heat of the demon escape from Taylor's body. It was like plunging his arms into a metalworking forge.

The demon shrieked and flailed, Taylor's skin lighting up a faint orange, like a fire was burning inside of him. "We had a bargain, Constantine!" he shouted despite the smoke pouring out his mouth.

"Sod your bargain. I never said yes to it," growled John, staring down at Buer. "But do give the First my regards when you see him, will you?"

With a final scream of pure rage, Buer convulsed in a cloud of oily smoke before the human body he'd overtaken went limp. After a few seconds, Chas slowly released Taylor from the chokehold and let go of Taylor's hands from where he'd had them pinned to his back. Taylor coughed but remained unconscious, curled up on the tiled floor.

"He'll live," said John after a moment. "Demonic healing. He's extraordinarily lucky, but Christ, what a moron – there's only several thousand ways that could've gone bad. Buer would've disemboweled every man, woman and child inside this building in under an hour once that kid's soul was out of the way."

Taylor was a fairly small man, and Chas was able to drag him over to the bed and lift him into it without much trouble. "Do you think it's true?" he asked.

"What's true?" said John.

Chas stared at him tiredly, not buying that one for a second. "What Buer said about Astra."

"Demons are notorious liars," said John with a shrug. "Goes with their whole 'being evil' shtick. Perhaps Buer just wanted to mess around with me head. Wouldn't be the first time."

Chas remained quiet as he drew the covers up over Taylor's chest. "I dunno. He sounded pretty convincing."

"Well, he's had millennia to practice," said John. "The best con man in the world could look you right in the eye and tell you the most blatant lie, and you'd believe it."

Taylor stirred on the bed, letting out a low moan. He slowly opened his eyes.

"Hey, you okay?" said Chas.

"Water," croaked Taylor.

Chas looked around. There was a small plastic pitcher and cup on the table near the bed, and he gave Taylor the cup after filling it with water.

Taylor took the cup and greedily guzzled it down, his eyes wide as they nervously flitted between Chas and John.

"Uh, how're you feeling?" asked Chas after Taylor had emptied the cup. After Buer had healed his body, he appeared to be fine, not at all like a man who'd been at death's door less than half an hour ago.

"Fine?" said Taylor, shrinking into the pillow. "Who are you guys and what're you doing in my room? You don't look like doctors."

John scoffed, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Are you bloody serious? You've just been inexplicably healed from injuries that by all rights should've killed you stone dead and that's the first question you ask?" he said, looming over Taylor. "Stupid git. I've got half a mind to take your rubbish soul anyway."

Taylor stared up at John, completely unfazed by his tirade. "Did you break out of the psychiatric ward? Do you need me to call someone?"

"Christ, I don't have the time for this," said John in irritation. He thrust two fingers against Taylor's forehead. "Sleep," he commanded.

Taylor's eyes rolled back and he fell back onto the hospital bed limply, his mouth hanging open.

John stood over the bed for a terse moment, and then sighed, shaking his head. "There. Hopefully he'll convince himself that was all a dream when he wakes up again," he said to Chas, opening the door leading out into the ICU's hallway. "Although I have no idea how his doctors are going to explain his, er, rather miraculous recovery from the brink of death."

"Huh. Does it still count as a miracle if a demon did it?" said Chas, making sure the heavy door shut quietly behind him.

John shrugged. "A miracle's a miracle no matter who did it, demon or angel. That alone is going to keep Buer out of the First of the Fallen's good graces for a very, very long time." He reached into his pocket and pulled out the ring of keys for the House of Mystery and sniggered slightly. "Least I shouldn't have to worry about that bugger popping out of Hell with revenge on his mind anytime soon."

John stopped in front of the supply closet again, moving out of the way of a harried-looking nurse carrying a laptop. He quickly unlocked the door leading back to the House and pushed it open. "After you, mate," he said, removing the key from the lock.

Chas crossed the threshold, walking towards the table.

"Oi, Chas! Look sharp!" John called.

Chas turned around just in time to see something shiny and jangling fly towards him. He automatically raised his hands and caught it against his chest. It took him a moment to realize what it was: the ring of keys to the House of Mystery.

Chas looked up, puzzled. "John, wh-"

John was still standing in the doorway, his hand on the doorknob. He looked tired and resigned. "I'm sorry for gettin' you mixed up in all this." He slammed the door shut.

"John!" Chas bellowed, rushing back towards the House's door. He threw it open.

On the other side of the door was a beautiful Georgia morning.


	14. fourteen: i walk away

**simple** **twist** **of** **fate**

by red-starshine

 **part fourteen: i walk away**

* * *

 _Ditching Chas and sticking him with the keys to the House of Mystery is a bastardly thing to do, but I can tell he wouldn't exactly approve of what I'm going to do – namely, get Astra's soul back and then burn that holy winged arse 'til there's nothing left of him except cold grey ashes. But omnipotent angel vs. squishy human mage isn't exactly a fair fight. Even if I leveled the playing field using the House's collection, Manny could still kill me easily. I shouldn't try to kid myself: this is little more than a suicide run, one final 'fuck you' before it all fades out._

 _But fuck it, if I die, I'm going to die trying to do something right for a change instead of bolloxing it all up like I usually do._

 _I'm not furious just because the angel had me dancing to his tune like a puppet on a string for over ten years, although that is a large, large factor behind me wanting to rip the bastard's bloody wings out with my bare hands. Astra hasn't been right since Newcastle, and she's had to grow up with part of her soul missing, the part of her that can be happy and enjoy life. If that angel had the missing piece of her soul the entire time, I am going to do my damned best to make sure that bastard regrets answering my call that night in Newcastle. He played with her life like it meant less than nothing – just a bargaining chip to keep the little blond monkey in line. He can fuck right off._

 _Of course, I've gambled with people's lives too, but at the very least I'm aware of the value of a human life. Manny couldn't give a toss - human are amusing little insects to him. Put them in a jar and watch them kill each other. Gaz, Emma, Frank; each time one of my friends died because of me or what I'd done, a little bit more of me died with them, until my connection to this world is almost as thin as the angel's._

 _And then there's Chas, who died less than an hour after I met him. That's probably a record: quickest death after befriending John Constantine._

 _I'm not sure what possessed me to try the spell on him after the fire – he was friendly, yes, handsome, very much so and compassionate to the point where his first instinct when the fire started was to try to help others instead of running for an exit. I'd tried to send him off with the others (too many, Jesus, so many bodies), but he didn't go where he was supposed to. He stayed in-between while all the other souls who'd already died crossed over. I'd followed his soul to the Crossroads and instead of the half-aware shadow repeating the same thing over and over I'd been expecting, he looked and acted just the same as he had before the fire._

 _God, I hadn't wanted him to cross over. Understandably, he didn't want to cross over either, and the spell came to my mind without thinking._

 _I've tried that spell multiple times out of desperation before, like the night I tried to get the demon out of Astra. It's never worked for me before – then again, it hasn't worked for anyone since the Dark Ages. I was more surprised than Chas was when his heart began to beat again._

 _Maybe I should've just left him there in the morgue, let him try to slot himself back into his real life. Maybe I shouldn't have shown him how the world I lived in worked, but he wanted to know. He's got a raw talent for magic, buried deep down. Not a large talent, but just enough to really see. He'll be a good caretaker for the House - better than I was, at any rate._

 _And he wanted to stay with me. That by itself is so unbelievable that I'm having a hard time wrapping my brain around it. Eventually he would've realized how much of a bastard I really am and punched me in the face, but still._

 _Chas had wanted to stay with me._

 _And now I'm going to die, killed by an angel._

 _Fuck me._


	15. fifteen: up in heaven (not only here)

**simple twist of fate**

by red-starshine

 **part fifteen: up in heaven (not only here)**

* * *

"Gaz!" Chas shouted at the top of his lungs, turning around and slamming the door to the House of Mystery shut. His fingers were wrapped tightly around the keyring, his knuckles turning white.

John was an idiot. Chas was an even bigger idiot for allowing himself to be played so easily.

Gaz appeared behind him, standing in a spot that had been empty the last time he'd looked. His eyes went to the keys, and then his eyes got very wide. "Oh. Fuck."

That seemed to sum up the situation very eloquently. "What just happened?" said Chas.

"I'm not sure. But he gave you the keys to the House of Mystery," Gaz said. "It belongs to you now."

"What?"

"Ownership of the House is transferred by giving the keys to someone. John tried to give them to Liv like her father wanted, but she returned the keys to him before she left." He nodded towards the keys Chas still held in his hand. "Then he gave the keys to you. The House and everything inside it is yours."

"What?" It seemed to be the only thing he could say. He shook his head, tried to get his mind moving again from where it was stuck. "Oh god. John's going to do something really stupid."

There was a moment of uncomfortable silence. "How stupid?" said Gaz finally, sounding very tired.

"I think he's going to try to get Astra's soul back from the angel." Chas looked down at the floor. He should've seen it coming – John had brushed off the demon's words too easily. Maybe if he had noticed, he would've been able to stop John from running off to go get himself killed.

And John was going to die, or at least he seemed to think so. The only reason he could think of for John to give the keys to him, turn over the House of Mystery and everything inside it, would be if John didn't expect to come back.

Gaz remained silent, his mouth twisting into an exasperated grimace.

Chas sighed, tucking the keys into his pocket. "How do I find John?"

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" said Gaz dubiously after a moment.

Chas snorted. "I know it's not," he said. "In fact, I'm pretty sure this is the single dumbest thing I'll ever do. But I'm not going to let him just get killed." He gave Gaz a shrug. I mean, he did save my life. I owe him this."

A conflicted look on his face, Gaz disappeared without warning. Before Chas could start to worry if he'd somehow offended Gaz without realizing it, Gaz reappeared further away, near part of the House's collection of mystical oddities. He motioned Chas over.

"There's not much in the House that can be safely handled by a novice," Gaz said. "But if you're going up against an angel, I'd take that with you." He pointed towards the golden hilt of the Sword of Night.

Chas picked up the Sword, expecting the little electric shock that went up his arm when his fingers touched it the metal. He slid off the leather scabbard, exposing the shining silver blade underneath. "But I don't know how to fight with a sword. What good'll this do?"

Gaz gave him another enigmatic half-smile. "It's a magic sword, remember? It'll help you. But just keep in mind that you won't be able to lie while you're holding it. The Sword of Night compels truth from anyone who touches it."

"I remember," said Chas, nodding. His grip tightened around the Sword. "Where's John?"

Gaz disappeared and then reappeared near the hallway leading deeper into the House, where Chas hadn't gone yet. "This way."

Chas followed Gaz down the hall, passing by an endless line of identical wooden doors on either side. "This feels kind of like one of those cheap haunted house rides, with a hallway that never ends," he said after several minutes of walking.

Gaz gave him a perplexed look.

"Nevermind. Why are we going down the hall? Is John still in the House?" said Chas.

Gaz shook his head. "No. The House of Mystery has doorways to many different places, not all of them on Earth. Experienced mages know how to walk past the boundaries of this world, but in your case, you'll need to use a door to get where John and the angel are now."

"Where are they, exactly?" asked Chas.

"Neutral ground. The place between life and death - I think you've been there before."

Of course he had. "The Crossroads."

Gaz nodded, stopping in front of one door. "Unlock the door with one of the keys," he said.

"Let's say I'm able to save John and not die. How do I get back here?" said Chas, transferring the sword to one hand so he could pull out the keys from his pocket. "Is the door going to stay open?"

"I'll keep it open for as long as I can," said Gaz. "Which is going to be about ten minutes, so you may want to do this as fast as possible."

Chas stuck one of the keys into the door's keyhole and turned. The loud sound of the lock turning seemed to make the small hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. He slid the key back out and then turned to look at Gaz as he put the keyring back in his pocket. "Thanks for this. Everything. You've been a big help."

Gaz gave a nod, not meeting Chas's eyes. "Good luck," he said wistfully, like he wasn't expecting to see Chas again.

Raising the Sword of Night, Chas pushed open the door leading to the Crossroads and stepped through.


	16. sixteen: the great gig in the sky

**simple twist of fate**

by red-starshine

 **part sixteen: the great gig in the sky**

* * *

The Crossroads looked almost exactly the same as it had the first time Chas had visited it: grey and bleak and desolate, the same dying tree with the weathered tire swing hanging from its branches nearby. John and Manny were nowhere in sight. Chas stopped and listened for any indication of where they might be, but the only sound he could hear was the wind whistling through the tree's branches and the creak of the fraying rope of the swing as it swayed.

Chas sighed and then looked down at the Sword of Night. Feeling incredibly stupid, he said to it, "Okay, so where are they?"

He felt a slight tug against the blade to his left. ' _This way_.' The words brushed against his mind lightly as he began to walk in the direction the Sword had indicated, and it took him a moment to realize that the sword had spoken to him.

"That's a little creepy," Chas said without thinking, and then winced. Gaz had warned him (twice) he'd be unable to lie as long as he touched the Sword, but apparently that also meant he'd also be unable to keep his thoughts to himself. "Sorry."

The Sword of Night gave a noncommittal hum in his mind, although Chas got the distinct feeling it was slightly exasperated. ' _My influence_ ,' it said. ' _Pay it no mind_.'

Chas kept looking for any sign of John and Manny, but all he could see was gnarled trees and brittle grass. He looked up into the sky, watching the dark streaks against the sky for a moment. The breeze blowing across the Crossroads was beginning to turn bitterly cold.

"God, how big is this place?" said Chas, more to himself than to the Sword.

The Sword answered him anyway. ' _Not very. The two you seek should be nearby_.'

After another five minutes of walking while the temperature quickly plummeted, Chas began to wonder what the Sword's definition of 'nearby' was, but managed to hold his tongue before the words slipped out. While the Sword of Night was helpful, he didn't like having to constantly stop himself from saying anything and everything that crossed his mind.

A ways ahead of him, he heard something that sounded like a branch snapping. Then he heard John give a yell of pain and realized it hadn't been a branch after all.

"Shit." Chas's stomach clenched, a wave of anger passing though him. He gripped the Sword of Night tightly. At the very least, John was still alive.

He spotted another twisted and sickly tree nearby and slowly approached it, trying to position himself behind the trunk to hide him from sight. He'd never been exactly stealthy, but then again he'd never had a real need to be stealthy before now. The Sword of Night nearly shook in his hand, ready for a fight, as he quickly peered around the trunk.

John was kneeling in the center of a mystic circle burned into the grass, alive but with blood streaming down several long gashes on his face. From the way John was cradling his left arm, it was badly broken. Manny was facing away from the tree Chas was hiding behind, thankfully, although it was also possible he had sensed Chas somehow as soon as he'd entered the Crossroads. He had no idea exactly what an angel was capable of.

' _Do not worry_ ,' said the Sword. ' _The angel does not know you are here yet. The mage does, however._ '

Chas leaned his head back against the bark. Of course John had spotted him.

' _Shall we begin_?' said the Sword after a moment. It almost sounded eager. ' _It will be a fine battle_.'

"You're a bloodthirsty little thing," muttered Chas as he gripped the Sword of Night in both hands.

The silver blade began to glow. ' _I am a Sword. I was made to shed blood_.'


	17. seventeen: deathwish

**simple twist of fate**

by red-starshine

 **part 17: deathwish**

* * *

Chas quickly reviewed his plan: run towards the angel, and hope that he could stab the angel before he realized what was going on.

It was not a very good plan, the Sword agreed, but they were pressed for time. It would have to do.

He swung out from behind the tree, raising the Sword of Night as he sprinted towards the angel and John. The angel's back was only a few feet away from the razor-sharp edge of the Sword, and he began to feel hopeful that his stupid plan might actually work.

Until the angel's head turned slightly, one gold eye looking at him. The angel suddenly vanished, leaving Chas's sword to pass through empty air. For one moment, he saw John, still on the ground with his hands spread across the sigil burning into the brown grass. John's eyes were wide, and Chas saw his mouth open. "Behi-"

Chas realized there was a dagger's blade sticking between his shoulder blades, cutting through skin, muscle and bone only a few moments before the pain began. It radiated from the dagger cut through the rest of his body as warm blood quickly ran from the wound. The angel twisted the dagger, driving the point further in. Chas succeeded in mostly stifling a scream, but a tiny whine of pain managed to escape from his mouth.

"Chas!" John shouted, his voice hoarse. "You fucking son of a bitch, stop hurting him!"

Chas's fingers spasmed, and the Sword of Night dropped to ground. His vision began to swim as his heart stuttered inside his chest.

"I don't take kindly to friends of John Constantine who try to stab me," said the angel smoothly.

Chas tried to move, tried to say something, but he couldn't. As his sight began to dim, the dead trees of the Crossroads still swirling jerkily around him, he saw John's face clearly.

The angel pulled the dagger free from Chas's back. Chas felt his body falling, landing on top of the Sword of Night, and then everything went black.

It should feel familiar, considering he'd died before, but it didn't. He felt like he was struggling to keep his head above water and a moment of rest would pull him down to a place he'd never come back from. He had no idea if the spell that'd brought him back to life the first time would work again – healing cuts and bruises were one thing, fixing a fatal stab wound was another.

'I screwed this up,' he thought sourly, struggling against the pull of the darkness.

"Not really," said a woman's voice. "You just need another chance, I think." A pale arm reached out to him, fingernails painted black. A woman smiled gently at him, her eyes heavily lined with kohl and a small spiral painted under one eye. Around her neck was a silver ankh pendant. "Up we go!" she said cheerfully.

The darkness fell away. To his surprise, Chas woke up, his face buried in the grass. He could feel the Sword of Night underneath him, and no pain from where the angel had stabbed him.

The angel was standing only a few feet away, between Chas and John. "Everyone who stands by your side dies, John. Every single time," he said. "Why'd you think he'd be any different?"

The angel thought Chas was dead, and was no longer a threat. That would work to his advantage. Silently, he rose behind the angel, picking up the Sword of Night.

He heard John audibly scoff and say, "Because, you idiot, this isn't the first time he's died."

With al the strength he could muster, Chas plunged the Sword through the angel's feathered wing and into its back, where a heart would've been if the angel was human.


End file.
